To whom it may concern,
 

RE: Granado Espada & Your Responsibilities

 

Greetings.

Until recently I was a player of the game that you hold the license for as a distributor, Granado Espada. I was playing the Southeast Asian version, in the server Carracci, a non-PK and the older known of the two non-PK servers, the other being Pachelbel.

Here I address to you, and to anyone concerned at all with the state that GE had fallen to even before I had quitted the game, and before all else, yes, I am blaming you, IAHGames, for letting GE fall to what it has today.

The points to note are listed in the following list:
- The game’s system
- The game’s economy
- Your customer service & public relations
- Your responsibilities
- My overall thoughts
 

Game’s System
First of all we touch upon the game. Truly, it cannot be said that you should be blamed for how weak the system turned out to be. It was a good idea, I prefer to think of it as being executed wrongly. However I still see many people blaming you, the wrong folks in this aspect, for the game’s system being so weak. It was the developer’s idea and his programming, you merely followed through with his ideas and work and earned the license to make any slight tweaks to it. You are not to be held wholly responsible for the way the game has turned out for most folks – weak, lack of depth, and so on.

So I do not entirely absolve you of all blame in this sector, but it can be seen that you could have at least done something to ease the pain. I can safely conclude after playing for more than seven months that you have not done anything worth mentioning to that effect.
 

The Economy
This was the biggest problem near the end of my stint as a GE player that I could see with the game. A simple summary if you will indulge me.

At the beginning, 1 million vis seemed a lot. The new players had to really earn their pay, it took time and effort and it made the vis worth it. But then the bots came in, and they stayed for a very long time before steps were taken to ensure they would be eliminated. Truth be told, to this day, I doubt if the steps taken were appropriate enough, and definitely not in time to save the economy.

Because the bots were the vis sellers’ way of earning enough vis to sell for cash through online sites (you want references, why not look at SharpGold and GranadoMart?), new players suddenly had a new way of earning vis fast – why not spend cash to buy vis from outside sources if you felt the vis was worth the cash? This led to an inflow of in-game vis, which of course, as any amateur in economics can tell you, will lead to an inflation in the market and a depreciation in the value of vis.
 

At first, the market inflation was hardly noticeable, and certainly not damaging enough. But all that changed when GE moved first to P2P, and then back to F2P. The P2P jump certainly made premium items that could be traded, such as enhancement boosters and the like, worth their value in vis, but what really killed the game was what happened after the game returned to F2P. The prices of premium items nearly doubled (and I know of people who sold them for more than double the original price when the premium items first came out), the inflation of the market soared, and the depreciation of vis continued to abysmal depths. You might think this is not too bad, but the ones really hurt by this inflation were not the old players like me by this time. No, it was the new players.

A simple example – a player reaches level 40 and wishes to get better equipment. He goes to the market and what does he see? Nothing less than +5 (at one point I could not find anything less than +6) enhanced armor for sale, and nothing less than 1 million vis as a price. How do you expect a new player to earn that much vis? I took until level 60 or so before I could see my first million.

Granted, the player could just buy any statless (what is known as white in in-game terminology) equipment or armor and wear that instead, but the game punishes you for that. The monsters (hereafter referred to as mobs for short) are just not the kind you can hope to take on easily from level 40 onwards without some good armor or equipment to back you up. You will get easily frustrated, especially as a player who never saw more powerful mobs, and who keeps getting killed thanks to bad equipment.
 

Now normally for most players this is not that big an issue, the essence of a MMORPG is, after all, to grind and level up, and you cannot expect the mobs to be marshmallows waiting for you to roast. But this all takes a different turn when you realize that there are cultures and players who do not mind spending money to get vis just to get such items. The core group of such players is unfortunately Filipino (not that I am discriminating against the Phillippines in particular, but I have seen most vis buyers have been from that country, and though I know of vis buyers from other countries, the majority are PH people) and they do have the money to spend.

There are two options with which you can get in-game vis easily as a new player. Other than the obvious choice of buying vis from vis sellers, the other is to spend money and buy G-points from IAH and then sell off tradable in-game premium items. And this, my dear IAH, is the catch – you earn from such new players far more easily.
 

At first I was very perplexed and could not understand why you seemed to be doing nothing at all to take care of vis sellers. As I recall, selling in-game currency like that is liable to be an illegal action and you can actually take steps to ensure that such vis sellers do not spoil the game for its players. But no such movement was taken, not even a note was made of the issue, despite players raising the issue all the time, both in-game, and on the official forums. Of course, this was until it hit me that, by making premium items tradable, you encouraged the in-game flow of vis, by making veteran players with vis buy premium items from new players who are hard-of-vis. Even veteran players who are hard-of-vis can just go buy some amount of G-points, buy some premium items, sell them off for vis, and voila.
 

One word describes what I think of this if this happens to be true, IAH – despicable. To the core, in fact. Are you really not confident of being able to earn back your capital? Are you really just out there to make money and refuse to take note of the players’ plight? Do you just wish to cut your losses, earn back money, and let things take their natural course from there and not give a shit as to what goes on in the game?

I admit, this is merely the conclusion I have come to after analyzing your actions to date regarding GE and players’ opinions. I have no real basis for accusing you, other than my careful analysis, of having done such. But then again it is hard to believe otherwise, even accounting for the fact that you may have many other things of priority. Your public relations to date ha
ve been, at best, dismal. The only representative that appears regularly is Hrin, and even she does not touch on all issues. I have not seen any major response to date touching upon in-game factors, which you might even consider to be “the players’ problem and not ours”. It is true that it would be solely the players’ problem had IAH done something about the illegal vis sellers in the first place.

So you indirectly earn from vis sellers, because money makes the world go round, literally. A veteran player buys vis, to buy not just premium items but also rare equipment and stuff in-game that can only be bought with vis. A new player buys G-points to buy premium items to sell off for vis that is desperately needed to get better equipment just to survive long enough for him or her to enjoy the game. It never ends, until GE itself ends.
 

Yes, I know, it happens in other games, but I never played other games. I can only talk about the one game here that I have taken part in and have analyzed and experienced. The economy inflation was very clearly your fault in the first place, IAH. I am not alone in thinking this way and the economy was one of the biggest reasons I left.

Finally, I can only speak for Carracci, but I have heard Pachelbel, from a player in that server itself, is even far worse. I cannot begin to imagine how much worse it can be, even after hearing the examples the player has given.
 

Customer Service & Public Relations
I have never seen a business that can do well without relating well to its customers, nor have I seen one that relates badly to its customers and hope to survive in the long term or make profits. It may be able to break even with a good product, but even that is iffy in nature.

And here I touch on your public relations, or lack thereof. I once sent a support ticket regarding my email. In fact, for fear of the first one having not been sent, I sent a follow-up, with slightly different wording. Near the end of my stint I sent yet another.

To this day, there has yet to be a response. What were you busy with, coding? Programming? Finding out how to make the game even “better”? I am not alone in asking exactly what the support department of IAH is doing. Tickets sent by others players have not been responded to, so much so that even when they posted in the support forums, the replies (or lack thereof) are rather disturbing. I had someone quote once that IAH told him in no uncertain terms to the effect of them saying “it’s not our problem”. That is some bad customer service right there. Too bad I do not have the direct quote on hand anymore.

And it is not only the players who complained about your lack of public relations and good service. I went down to Comics Connection in Toa Payoh, and I was told by the owner, after looking for your Bellem’s Box of the Month item, in Chinese that you had very bad service right from the start. The game had been out for months (this was last December) and they still had not received the limited edition boxsets that they had preordered. If this was some kind of joke on your part, it certainly did not strike the humor chord of the owner. He was, the least to say, very displeased with the way you had dealt your business with him…or rather, the lack thereof.
 

Your Responsibilities
Had you, Team IAH, not said from the start that you were responsible for any player contacts and in-game tweaks that were considered to be “imbalanced” or game-breaking for the player, maybe this would not even have arose. But unfortunately, by obtaining the license to distribute and maintain the game, you are definitely responsible for the following:

- taking immediate action to stop any illegal activities within the game
- acting upon players’ suggestions and feedback, or at least taking note of such feedback
- acting with swift authority upon players’ reports of illegal activity
- maintaining good customer relations and services with not just the players but dealers of your products
- improving upon gameplay in any way possible in time

These are the responsibilities that I feel you hold to the general gaming community of Granado Espada. Please, do correct me if I happen to be wrong, and for the players, add on to this list if you feel IAHGames holds more responsibilities to you than what I have listed here.
 

My Thoughts
If what I mentioned about the reason behind IAH not taking any action against vis sellers is true, then I only have one thing to say IAH.

Stop your clammed-up policies. Start communicating more with players. You are not going to earn any respect and in direct relation, future profits by not listening to the players and not acting upon it. You are right, it seems more work to you than profits, but to the players, it is a game. And a game only gains popularity if it has a good product, which GE has proven itself to be a failure in, or if the services and customer relations provided by the company that takes care of that game is good. You have, as I have said quite a few times in this letter, not provided the good relations and services that one is expected to offer.

A business does not operate solely on economic laws alone. You do not expect to get your money back in one day, nor can you expect to get any decent amount of profit from customers with a bad relationship with the very people who pay you for the product and/or services. Businesses who give more and take less, earn more. This is proven to be basic business sense. You seem to lack that.

Furthermore IAH, in case you believe me to be wrong in any respect, I have had substantial accounts from “witnesses” (players in-game) to support my theories and conclusions in this post. I would suggest that you at least take more action and show more of yourself, as well as make premium items untradable in-game if you really want to earn money the right way. At least be honest about it.

Finally, the phrase about “there is no I in team” would be true…had it not been applied to you. You called yourselves Team IAH. Too bad, there may be no “I” in team, but there is one in “Team IAH”. You want to get rid of your bad reputation, then start bucking up, do something, because the time is now.
 

Yours, truly pissed,
Panther
 

PS: My in-game account is “panther” with your passport site, and I play in Carracci as RobinHunt. Ban me if you like, because I no longer touch the game anyway. You fail, IAH. That is all.

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